Hampton Museum Project To Capture City's Rich History

Groundbreaking Set For June 13

May 12, 2001|By CHRISTOPHER SCHNAARS Daily Press

HAMPTON — A ship's hold displays english textiles, furniture and other manufactured goods paid for with Virginia tobacco.

In the next room, a model of Blackbeard's head serves as an admonition to other would-be pirates. Another gallery built to resemble the burned-out ruins of the city in 1861 tells visitors about the Civil War and Reconstruction.

FOR THE RECORD - Published correction ran Thursday, May 17, 2001.A story in Saturday's Local section about the Hampton History Museum misspelled the name of the Chamberlin Hotel as Chamberlain. (Text corrected.)

"The museum will be dedicated to interpret Hampton's unique and irreplaceable history," said Michael Cobb, the city's curator. "Few communities in America have the story that Hampton offers, from the complex culture of the Native Americans, from the arrival of The Virginia Co. settlers to the devastation of the Civil War, through the rebuilding of Hampton with the emergence of the seafood industry."

The telling of that story to the public is little more than a year away.

This week , the Hampton History Museum Association tentatively awarded a $3.56 million contract to Oyster Point Construction Co. of Newport News to build the Hampton History Museum, said Bill Mingee, supervising buyer in the city's procurement office.

Oyster Point had the lowest of nine bids, Mingee said, and the other eight companies that bid on the project have 10 days to object to the contract award.

Oyster Point is scheduled to break ground for the museum on June 13. The museum will be built in a city parking lot across from St. John's Church in downtown Hampton. Cobb said construction should be finished some time next summer.

A gallery with about 2,000 square feet on the second floor will be used to house one or two temporary exhibits, Cobb said. Temporary exhibits will be displayed for about six months.

"The objects being displayed inside help to further explain how Hampton came to be a place, so our connection with the community (was) trying to identify this as a special museum for Hampton," said Mark Soyars, a project manager for Glave & Holmes Associates. The Richmond architectural firm designed the museum.

On the first floor, the museum will house nine permanent galleries totaling 4,000 square feet -- about the size of a large five- or six-bedroom house.

* When visitors enter the galleries, a rotunda will display quotations from historical figures talking about Hampton's relation to the sea.

* The Powhatan Gallery showcases the lives and culture of Native Americans. It will also have replicas of Native American artifacts that children will be able to handle.

The museum will be used to tie lesson plans to Standards of Learning, a statewide standardized test, said Connie Abernathy, the social studies curriculum leader for Hampton City Schools.

"It's a wonderful opportunity to make history really, really personal and not so far-fetched and removed and just a bunch of dead stuff," Abernathy said.

* A 17th-century gallery will deal with the arrival of The Virginia Co. and colonists sent to harvest timber for England.

* The 18th century gallery will have a recreation of Blackbeard's head and information on the 1775 Battle of Hampton. Cobb said Jefferson referred to the battle as the beginning of the American Revolution in Virginia.

* Between those centuries is the Port Hampton gallery -- a recreated ship's hold that shows the manufactured goods colonists got by trading tobacco with England.

"What we were trying to do was to give the visitor a break from one century to the next," said Bob Riggs, part-owner of Riggs Ward Design in Richmond. "And in doing so, we were able to suggest the importance of the ports of Hampton." Riggs Ward designed the museum galleries.

* Besides the ship's hold, Riggs said another impressive room is the Civil War and Reconstruction gallery. That room will be built to resemble the ruins of 1861, when Confederates burned down the city rather than risk its capture by Federal troops, Cobb said. The gallery also deals with thousands of contrabands -- former slaves who sought protection from Fort Monroe.

* The Antebellum Gallery will showcase plantation culture, women and the construction of forts Monroe and Wool. The Recovery Gallery deals with the emergence of Hampton Institute, the seafood industry and resorts that began to open in the city, such as the Chamberlin and Hygeia hotels.

* The Modern Hampton Gallery will focus on what King and Queen Street looked like at the turn of the century, with lots of artifacts from the fire department, Cobb said.

* The museum will also house the city's visitor center and includes a large room for lectures and other programs.

Christopher Schnaars can be reached at 247-4768 or by e-mail at cschnaars @dailypress.com